News

Subtropics is a magazine that's been bright on my radar ever since its first issue back in 2006. David Leavitt's been picking terrific work, they pay their authors well, and they print the magazine on that beautiful opus dull 80 lb. paper.

(Yes, I admit it, I asked.)

So it was really gratifying to hear back in October of last year that he'd picked a story of mine called "Stump," and the issue in question (Winter/Spring 2008) is now out and about, bearing Chris Bachelder and Owen King and Ben Stroud and Bob Hicok and Mark Jarman and Mark Doty to your very doorstep.

I got the nut for this one from an old friend named Marco: he and a mutual friend named Craig had gotten into some good trouble, and gotten out, and the story Marco told me about that day was, frankly, way too good to be true--both in the sense that it was just an extraordinarily perfect gift as the base of a future story, and in the sense that Marco was obviously exaggerating to hit the punchlines with extra oomph.

Anyway, I sat on the anecdote for a couple of months, and then called Craig, and it turned out that Marco had actually been downplaying the thing--not something I'd ever known him to do. I had to tame the afternoon down even a bit more to make the story work as anything like realism.